The Lost Wagon Part 43

There was wistfulness in this voice, "I haven't any mother. She died when I was eight."

"Oh." Emma's sympathy was immediate and sincere. "I'm sorry! Do you remember very much about her."

He said simply, "I'll never forget her. We lived in Baltimore."

"Was it nice there?"

His voice was dreamy. "While my mother was alive, we had a big house and there was always fun. But she went, and then my father died when I was twelve and--"

He paused suddenly and turned to look shrewdly at her. "Any more questions, Mrs. Tower?"

In the darkness, Emma blushed. But she carried on determinedly. "You've expressed a desire to marry Barbara," she said frankly, "and you want to take her on an overnight trip to Laramie. Naturally, I intend to find out a great deal more about you, Ellis."

"Very well!" he said, angry now. "Here are some facts." He began speaking rapidly and distinctly, shooting out the facts as though he were making a legal report. "When my father died my Uncle George was the executor. There was always enough money, but Uncle George and I didn't get along. He wanted me to go into his bank. I didn't care for that. For a year I went to Columbian College--that's in Washington, Mrs. Tower, and then...."

He broke off sharply, and there was a long moment of silence. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet and ashamed. "Forgive me, Mrs. Tower.

You've a right to know everything about me that you want to know. You've already found out one bad thing about me--I have a quick temper and an unpleasant one. I want to apologize."

"That's all right, Ellis," Emma said serenely. "Let's go on from here.

You were at college in Washington, you say?"

"Yes, ma'am," he said humbly. "I met a girl in Washington, Mary Harkness. I was in love with her. When Mary's folks decided to come west, there seemed to be nothing left for me in the east. I came along.

It seemed the right thing to do. I had enough money to buy a horse and everything else I needed."

"What happened, Ellis?" Emma whispered.

"When we got to Laramie, Mary married a man named Jeremy Blake. They went on together."

Emma's voice was very gentle. "Did it hurt?"

"I wished I could die."

Emma said, "You must understand that not all women are good, Ellis, any more than all men are. After enticing you to come along, and then marrying someone else--"

"I haven't made myself clear, Mrs. Tower. She did not entice me to come along; I came of my own free will and entirely because I wanted to. Nor was Mary in any sense of the word bad or deceitful. She is fine, loyal, and good. She simply didn't want me."

Emma's heart beat happily. Ellis had chased a woman all the way from Maryland, Jim Snedeker had said. Now Emma knew the story. She asked,

"What did you do then, Ellis?"

There was a faint trace of remembered bitterness in his voice. "I went to work for Jim. I knew there would be nothing for me at his post, but the way I felt then there seemed to be nothing for me anywhere. I just worked along, without much hope or any plan at all. Then you brought Barbara."

"And she means much to you?"

He said firmly, "I'm grateful Mary made the choice she did."

She took his arm. "Come along, I must get my sugar." She stopped at the entrance to the store. "Oh, Ellis. One more thing. About that New Year's dance at Fort Laramie. I want you to know that I think it's a splendid idea."

"You do!"

"Certainly. Young people should enjoy themselves, and Barbara will be perfectly all right with Ynez Driscoll." She was rewarded with a smile of the purest grat.i.tude and delight.

Emma bought a pound of sugar, which she really had not needed, and went back to the cabin. Contentedly she slept beside Joe, and was still drowsy when he awakened. She knew when Joe got out of bed to start both fires, then crawled back in to wait until the cabin warmed. She heard the children giggling in their beds.

They breakfasted, and Emma and Barbara began to prepare the Christmas dinner. Except that they would have had turkey instead of ham, everything would have been exactly this way back in Missouri. But so long had they been out, living from what they had in the wagon and building fires under every possible condition, and so much longer had they been at Snedeker's, eating wild meat and stretching other foods as far as possible in order to save money, that this seemed to be scaling the utmost heights of luxury. They baked the ham and pies, and Emma opened three jars of string beans that had also been saved for this occasion. There were no potatoes. But there was feathery-light bread and b.u.t.ter.

It was a memorable Christmas dinner, one that was never forgotten by any of the older people who partook of it. Emma had brought spices for the ham, and Joe carved and served pink slices of the steaming delicacy.

When everybody had eaten as much as they could, there was still a full third of the ham left. But Emma's three pumpkin pies had been eaten to the last crumb.

Tad went out to test his hatchet, and after the dishes were washed Barbara and Ellis took a walk in the snow. Emma and Joe watched the young couple as they left. Emma had told her husband of her talk with Ellis. His response had been an uneasy one.

"He's mighty hasty, seems to me."

"Mighty young, too," she had reminded him.

Still enthralled with their presents, the youngsters played busily.

Snedeker took a blackened pipe from his pocket, filled it with vile-smelling tobacco, and offered the tobacco pouch to Joe.

"Smoke?"

"No thanks. I never got the habit."

"Lordy, lordy. No smokin'. No drinkin'. What do you do, Joe?"

"I like to hunt and fish."

"Of both you'll find a heap in Oregon," Snedeker a.s.sured him. "Though 'tain't an' never will be like 'twas. I remember--"

Joe and Emma listened while he spoke of the west that used to be. He spoke of Blackfeet, Sioux, p.a.w.nees, and of battles with them. He created word pictures of virgin creeks which, until the Mountain Men came, had known no white man's tracks. There were so many buffalo that the plains were black with them and the thunder of their hoofs drowned even a shrieking wind. Snedeker told of vast herds of deer, elk, and antelope.

He told of colorful camps and rendezvous.

"I seen it all," he continued, "and 'tain't so many years it took to see it. The like will never be again. The west is growin' up. Buffalo hides have took the place of beaver. Emmy-grants, crazy for land, are pourin'

in like a falls off a mountain. Mebbe, when you come to think of it, that's right too. The west was made for people, not buffalo. Do you know they's even crazy talk of a railroad an' wire line clean across the kentry? Yep. Five minutes after somebody in New York says it, somebody in San Francisco will know what he said. I misbelieve that'll ever be; don't see how it can be. But when the buffalo go, an' they's sure to go, they'll be lots of things. All the gold they found in Californy won't be a acorn's wuth to what will be found. I don't mean gold, nuther. They's ore beds in the west for the whole kentry ten times over. They's farm land thick with wild gra.s.s, an' that'll grow crops jest as good. They's a galore of timber, enough to make all the cities an' towns what'll ever need be made. The emmy-grants who've gone ain't made a dent in the west.

Some day Oregon alone will have twicet as many emmy-grants as have been over the Trail in the past ten years, an' they'll be room for 'em.

They'll be cities on the west coast to shade anything what's on the east." He became wistful. "The west will be tamed, but I'm right glad I ain't goin' to live to see it all tamed. I wouldn't like that a'tall."

That night Joe went happily to bed, for Snedeker's discourse had been a great comfort to him. He had left Missouri because he needed room and opportunity for his children, and he was getting into the west while there was still plenty of both. When the millions came, providing they came at all in his time, he would be too old to care and the children would be young enough to adjust.

Rising in a cloudless sky, next morning's sun brought little warmth.

Overnight the weather had turned very cold, so that a thick glazing of frost lay on the windows. Since there was a great pile of logs at the building site, and no special hurry about getting any more, today Joe and Ellis were to see if they could find some buffalo. By all means they were to bring in something, for meat stocks at the post were low. If they couldn't find buffalo, they were to try for elk or deer. Should they discover a herd of buffalo, they were to shoot as many as possible.

Though there was a limit to the meat that could be used, Snedeker could hire squaws to cure the hides. There was a steady market for buffalo robes in the east, but it was not necessary to send them east in order to realize a good profit. Oregon-bound emigrants would pay four dollars each for buffalo robes right at the post.

Ellis rode his horse, Joe mounted the mare mule, and each man carried a rifle. Without speaking they mounted the ridge behind the post and went into pine forest. A deer flitted among the trees and Joe raised his rifle. But the deer was gone before he could get a shot.

"Let's try for buffalo first," Ellis suggested. "We can always pick up something else if we don't find any."

"All right with me. Have you hunted buffalo?"